Market Forces

Co-authored with Nat Keohane.

Marc Gunther lists ten reasons why “Cancun can’t.” We won’t go into his other nine points here, but number three on the list hit home:

Environmentalists have been disingenuous about the climate issue. They’ve argued that regulation of carbon dioxide will create green jobs and grow the economy. Typical is this graphic from Environmental Defense. (“Get a step-by-step picture of how a carbon cap will spark new jobs, lift the economy and clean the air.”) Uh, no. Most economists agree that dealing with global warming will entail short term costs. (See Eric Pooley’s excellent analysis at Slate.)

Talking about jobs is one of the most difficult things to do well in the arena of climate policy. The jobs issue is highly politically charged—and for good reason, given the state of the economy. But it struck us as unfair for Marc to use EDF as his bête noire.

To begin with, the graphic that Marc links to doesn’t make the claim he ascribes to it. We weren’t saying that climate policy was a free lunch. What we were pointing out was that doing something about climate can also create good jobs in some unexpected places. More on that in a minute.

We have bent over backwards to be as balanced and rigorous as possible in our assessment of the economics of climate change.

This turns out to be perfectly illustrated by Eric Pooley’s analysis—the same one Marc links to.

Eric’s indeed excellent analysis makes two points:

First, there is a broad consensus that the cost of climate inaction would greatly exceed the cost of climate action.

That’s the main, often-forgotten point because it seems so obvious: “it’s cheaper to act than not to act.”

We should really stop here and reflect on that for a second. Many—if not most—economists do, in fact, agree on that statement and have for a while.

But that’s not our point here, either. Read More »